On Tuesday morning, TWRA shared a photo to its social media featuring the Kingston man, Henry Dyer, with his state record paddlefish which weighs a whopping 149 pounds and measures 79 and 5/8″ long and 44 and 3/8″ in girth. Dyer reeled in the prehistoric-looking gilled creature out of Cherokee Lake.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
That would feed a family for awhile!
ReplyDeleteAre they good eatin'?
DeleteI'll never know. If I ever caught something that odd, I'd just toss it back because it's too cool looking to eat.
DeleteI did a search and apparently it is tasty. You have to trim the white fatty outer part of the meat and grill the dark meat only. It's tastes different but most guys think it's really good.
DeleteThere are some trippy YouTube videos of these things feeding on phytoplankton by swimming with their pelican-like mouths wide open while they scoop their food up. If you think they look strange on a tailgate watch them feeding. Bizarre.
That thing looks prehistoric. I was today years old when I learned what a paddlefish is.
ReplyDeleteThough related to sturgeon, paddlefish are noted to be good to eat.
ReplyDeleteThe (unprocessed) roe from the fish can fetch over $100/lb.
The fish is listed as being vulnerable to overfishing (for the caviar market) therefore limited to one per day.
The lake was created by the TVA. Several settlements and towns, most notably Bean Station, were flooded out.
My ancestors were the founders of Bean Station. The oldest daughter, Sarah, was captured by the Cherokee and lived with them for several years before returning to her family. Her son was my maternal great grandmother’s grandfather. Go Vols.
Deletethey are boneless and very easy to clean. slice the pink fat off and cook 'em how you like to eat fish. we call 'em boneless cat. spooner.
ReplyDeleteI live in Michigan, and my hometown has a river called the White River running exact center of town, also it separates two distinct counties. When we had our 100 century party, they put out a book with facts of the days of old up to then, 1966. One of the facts was that a guy named Samuel Pinkerton has speared a Sturgeon that weighed 90 pounds in the river, and then jumped out of his boat and onto the Sturgeon, shoving his hands into the gills, in order to "drown" the fish and kill it.
ReplyDeleteThe picture of the thing was impressive, hanging as tall as the man was.
I see people eat salmon roe on the Food Network, and can't believe it. The stuff smells awful, and it has a rotten texture as well.
We did eat sucker eggs, which are tiny and we ate them cooked. Suckers are like they sound, a bottom feeder with a sucker like mouth. The fillets we scaled then cut off the carcass, and scored the flesh to the skin. That let the bones cook up to nothing, and you could eat the fish with no worry about the bones bothering you.